Hanukkah Recipe: Baked Latkes and Crockpot Applesauce

If you love latkes but not the oil permeating your entire house, and you don’t feel like frying latkes in your garage or outside, try these oven-baked latkes. Serve them with this homemade applesauce from your slow cooker.

Applesauce

I swear it’s faster to throw this in the slow cooker than to drive to the store to buy a jar of applesauce. Because you can taste as it cooks, you have the opportunity to spice and sweeten it to your own taste. This cooks down to about 4 cups of sauce.

4 – 5 lbs. crisp apples, 6 – 10 apples, approx. 12 cups

2 - 4 Tbsp. light brown sugar

½ tsp. cinnamon

¼ tsp. nutmeg, allspice AND cardamom

¾ cup apple cider

½ cup washed fresh cranberries (optional but awesome)

I used a combination of Cameo, Rome, and Golden Delicious. Other recommendedapples are Jonagold, Pink Lady, Fuji, and MacIntosh. But really, any apple will do. Each variety will cook down differently and their sweetness will vary, but you’re going to mash them and you can add sugar if necessary. Try to get organic, unsprayed and unwaxed apples, so you won’t have to peel them! You can find good organic apples at Mom’s Organic Market or Whole Foods.

Wash and core your apples. Dice them into large chunks and toss into crockpot. Fill the crockpot about three-quarters full with apples and cranberries. Sprinkle with 2 Tbsp. brown sugar and spices. Pour the cider over everything. Cover and cook on high for 3 hours or low heat for 6 hours. The apples should be very soft.

Remove the lid and smush the apples with a potato masher until you have the consistency you like. Taste and add additional spices and sugar as necessary. If you have included cranberries, you may need up to an additional ¼ cup sugar.

If the sauce seems too dry, add additional cider. If it’s too watery, drape a clean cotton tea towel or a doubled extra-strength paper towel over the top of slow cooker and then cover it with the lid. The towel will collect the condensation and prevent it from dripping back into the sauce.

Continue cooking on high for another half hour or so. If you prefer smooth applesauce, use an immersion (stick) blender, run the sauce through a food mill or blender, or just smush the sauce further with the potato masher. Serve warm . . .with latkes!

Oven-Baked Latkes

2 large eggs

½ tsp. each salt and pepper

3 Tbsp. all-purpose flour

1 small yellow onion

1.5 lbs. Yukon Gold potatoes

2 Tbsp. vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 450º. Take two large cookie sheets with no sides and line them with foil. Coat each cookie sheet copiously with cooking spray, about 20 seconds of spray for each sheet, covering all the foil. Set aside.

Put eggs, salt and pepper and flour in a large bowl, mix thoroughly, set aside.

Grate the onion in food processor with the coarse grating disk. Take small handfuls of the grated onion and squeeze each handful over a small bowl. Leave the onion juice in that bowl and toss the squeezed onion into the large bowl with the egg mixture.

Peel the potato and grate it in food processor with the coarse grating disk. Use the same technique to squeeze the potato juice into the small bowl. Add the squeezed potato to the large bowl; mix gently until potato shreds are coated.

Carefully pour out the liquid from the onion and potato juice, leaving the sediment at the bottom of the bowl. That’s the potato starch. Mix it into the large bowl.

Drop about 3 Tablespoons of potato mixture onto greased cookies sheets, flattening it to make a 3-4 inch pancake. Reduce oven temperature to 425º and bake 15 minutes.

Take one pan from the oven at a time. Brush the tops of each latke with vegetable oil (or spray with cooking spray) and flip each one. Return to oven and bake an additional 10-15 minutes until latkes are golden and the edges are very crispy.

Make approximately 18 latkes.

This year, Hanukkah begins on the evening of Saturday, Dec. 8, and ends a week later on Sunday, Dec. 16. For more information on local commemorations check out our Hanukkah in Potomac post here.